Gardening Topic for December 2004
The Gardener's Winter
Provided
by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org.
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By Carole Fuller, Master Gardener |
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OK, it’s nice to have a little break from the weeding and cutting, but once the holidays are over, there are a lot of winter days before you can work the soil. Here are a few ideas to get through the darker days.
Get a better look at your woody plants
Now that the leaves are down, take a good look at trees and shrubs and mark any
areas (within your capabilities) to be pruned with baby ribbon or string. You
can come back in early March and trim just as new growth is beginning and
remove any winterkilled sections as well.
Map the color schemes of your garden
Get out your colored pencils or crayons and make a color mapping of your
gardens. You don’t need to be fancy—approximate blobs of colors
will signify. Then when the plant and seed catalogs come rolling in right after
the holidays, you’ll have some rational basis for buying other than the
desperation of winter.
Use up those old seeds and see what happens
If you have seeds you forgot to use last season, you have little to lose by
scratching up an areas and scattering seeds to lie under the snow. If
you’ve begun a new garden, you can fill in with cheaper annuals for a
season or two until your permanent pattern fills in. Choose plants that
don’t self-sow too profusely.
Blanket your roses
Once the ground has frozen, you can mound manure at the base of roses up to
about a foot. The mulch gives them a jump in the spring and keeps mice away
from the base over the winter. Even fresh horse manure will do if the ground is
frozen; it will decompose over the winter.
Clean and sharpen your tools
A plastic wastebasket or sheetrock compound bucket filled with sand and light
mineral oil makes an inexpensive scouring mix for anything without nooks and
crannies. Turfers and shovel edges are fair game for amateurs, but good nippers
require a deft touch to preserve the proper cutting angle. Keep the sand mix around
during the summer to rub off caked dirt.
Take advantage of an unheated sun porch or a sunny
windowsill
Depending on the amount of sunlight you get, your three-season porch can become
a cold frame to overwinter hardy perennials you didn’t get into the
ground. As spring approaches, you can get a jump on the season by using the
sunlight and absence of wind to start some plants. Watch the humidity level, as
cool temps and moisture will bring out pests.
You or young children may enjoy starting a small herb garden on a sunny windowsill. Lemon balm, thyme, and chives are fairly hardy and strongly scented when rubbed.
Surf the net
Spend a few hours on a sloppy day browsing garden resources on the Web In
addition to UMass, large state universities have lots of good information on
their websites, as do the top-ranked nurseries in the country. The national
societies for roses, iris, boxwood, ferns, herbs and numerous other plants
offer reliable information and sources for their specialties. Find the sites
with great photos of the pests you have to deal with. Find some interesting
craft projects that use the plant materials you saved from summer, or plan next
year’s work with a project in mind. If you have garden books you’ve
wanted to buy, this is a good time to browse the remainder bookshops for big
discounts, online or in your town.
Check your houseplants
Did critters come in when you brought your plants inside from summer camp? Keep
an eye on them now that the heat is on regularly and their habitat has changed
from temperate to nearly arid. If you haven’t done it yet, prune large
plants back and shape them, as they can’t support the large amount of
foliage they developed over the summer.
Get outside when it snows
Use a mop handle or light broom to knock heavy snow off evergreen shrubs before
it thaws and freezes. Be careful not to snap frozen branches. Don’t try
to remove ice, as you will strip off leaves or rip branches.
Add a touch of springtime by forcing a flowering
branch
Take sharp nippers or a knife and study your favorite flowering shrub or tree.
Go outside to your favorite flowering bush or tree. Look for a branch with a
number of buds on it and cut so it will fit comfortably in the vase you have
planned for it. Bring your cuttings indoors and put them in a vase (or vases)
of water.
Depending on the type of flower you cut, the buds should begin to open in the warmth of the house within two to six weeks. (It is the warmth that brings on the bloom, not sunlight.) Once the branch begins to bloom, move it to a moderately sunny spot. Moderate heat and light will allow the blooms to last longer.
For other articles, check out our archives
Provided
by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org.